Dennis Janson, veteran sports anchor of ABC affiliate WCPO in Cincinnati, blogged Thursday that he wasn't sure that the station's assistant news director fully understood the newsworthiness of the hometown Bengals' announcement earlier that day that ticket prices would be reduced for more than 14,500 seats in Paul Brown Stadium next season.
"Denise, this has never happened," he told Denise Eck, who had urged Janson to report the announcement during the 6 p.m. newscast. "It's big."
It's big because the Bengals, who have merely held the pricing line after subpar seasons, are chasing their second playoff berth in three years. Regardless of whether or not the team defeats Baltimore on Sunday, ticket prices will be reduced by as much as $20 on some seats in 2012. More than a quarter of all seats will see a reduction of some kind. All other seat prices will remain unchanged.
The announcement came just days after Bengals officials scrambled to sell 18,000 tickets on Monday and Tuesday as part of a two-for-one promotion, thus producing a sell-out (only the team's third over its previous 13 home games) and avoiding a local TV blackout of the all-important Ravens game.
"We have a young team trending in the right direction, and we are pleased to share this new price structure with our fans in an attempt to make some seats more affordable," Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn said in a statement. "We have a great home schedule in 2012 and look forward to it being an exciting season that builds upon this year's success."
Fans in several other major-league cities can look forward to greater affordability next season, if not greater fortunes on the playing field.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers announced in November that prices on 80 percent of the seats in Raymond James Stadium will be reduced next season, while the Chicago White Sox informed the majority of their season-ticket holders that prices were coming down by 18 percent. In October, the New York Mets revealed that they were reducing prices on certain 2012 tickets by as much as 30 percent, while the Los Angeles Dodgers announced they were slashing some seat prices by 60 percent. That month, new Philadelphia Sixers owner Joshua Harris used his introductory press conference to declare price cuts of 50 percent on 9,000 single-game tickets. And a month earlier, the Chicago Cubs, who surpassed the three-million mark in attendance for the eighth straight season, said they planned to lower the price of bleacher seats next year - open spaces visible to TV viewers being given as the reason for the price reduction.
Colleges likewise are reassessing their price structures. On Dec. 16, University of Memphis officials cited dwindling crowds as reason to cut season ticket prices in half in some areas of the Liberty Bowl in 2012, the first season under coach Justin Fuente. "It's totally contrary to anything you learn in Marketing 101," Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson said, as reported by the Memphis Commercial Appeal. "But we talked about it and felt it was the right thing to do.
"The rule of thumb is to kick [prices] up when you bring in a new coach, but we have a 62,000-seat stadium, and we haven't been drawing well lately. We're trying to get the fans back. It's a different set of circumstances that called for a different course of action."
